


Daughter of Eve, Niece of Thomas

by jalendavi_lady



Series: Nieces and Nephews [7]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-11-14
Updated: 2010-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jalendavi_lady/pseuds/jalendavi_lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After The Last Battle, Susan Pevensie must come to terms with all she has experienced and all she has lost. Book and movie spoilers within.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story plays with theology.

It is the first time she has been in a church since that long ago trip to America.

She sits alone for the first time ever, the first pew stretching, empty, to both sides of her.

Five coffins, and the Professor, his friend, Eustace, and Jill already in the ground.

She cries through the service, remembering.

She wants her throne, with Peter beside her, his crown glinting in the Cair Paravel sun.

She wants the mourning cloak she once wore to state funerals.

The royal parents, High King Peter the Magnificent, King Edmund the Just, and Queen Lucy the Valiant deserve better than her closet in this world can offer.

Earth and Narnian customs were so different, after all.

 _Tumnus would have had a fit. A Queen of Narnia, wearing black? And the High King buried without Aslan's banner flying?_

But even if there were a way to break Aslan's instructions and reenter Narnia, everyone from back then is long dead.

She'd thought she was used to being alone, but now the world is proving her wrong.

And as the church empties around her, she is alone and longing for the days when she wrote invitations to princes instead of thank yous for fruit baskets.

* * *

He had told them not to come back.

She reminds herself of this as she sits in the quiet house meant for six.

Spring is coming soon. Edmund always had his way of getting distressed during the entire Lent season and the rest of the family had their ways of quietly ignoring it.

Susan avoids the Easter services and has ever since that first journey. The words are too close, the meanings too powerful... Lucy loves – _loved_ – the season, but for Susan it is forever tinged with leering creatures and bloody knives.

The romp... the romp seems so far away and oh, what she would give for one moment of her face buried in his mane again.

She knows she figured out Aslan's words about needing to find him in her own world far too early. It was one thing to obey and quite another to understand.

Why follow a thousand rules when he who gave the rules left you in charge of a country he loves without much more than a "bear it well"?

Why go to Easter pageants when you have heard the stone table break, kissed his nose before, and had your face licked afterwards?

She had never let Edmund know she woke crying every year. She regrets it now, knowing they had been the closest of the four in Narnia for a time, the lady diplomat and her just brother who bailed her out whenever this or that prince took things too seriously.

The dance of nations, the layers of finery and polished words... for all the talk of bows, _that_ had been her battlefield. The dances, the preparations for feasts and making sure the right people would be at the proper spots at the high table...

Things she can never do again.

She tries, plays the socially conscious young woman.

But the very things that made her Queen Susan the Gentle do not work here. The rules are every bit as complicated as those of the Tisroc's personal court, only even less sensical.

 _Did we even have a protocol for mourning the High King?_

She doubts it. There was never a need for one before. But now...

 _What flowers does one leave at the gravestone? What prayers does one offer?_

 _Do Narnian prayers even work on Earth? It seems silly for prayers for the Lord of Cair Paravel to be made in anything but Aslan's name – that name and not another, no matter if the names belong to the same being._

"May they find their way to Aslan's country, and may the High King be ever safe between the lion's paws."

The name rings in the air. Has it really been so long since she said those two syllables?

She has tried to hard to follow his order. Tried to become part of her own world, tried to know him better on Earth than in Narnia.

On both counts she considers herself a failure.

* * *

A table full of fruit baskets.

Some random cut of meat Eustace's parents had dropped off "on the way home from the market".

A fire poker.

A fireplace.

She sighs.

 _It would have to be Narnian cooking for dinner, wouldn't it? Can it really have been seven years?_

 _Now, how did Peter and Trumpkin do this?  
_

* * *

 _  
_

Earth beef and apples alone were nothing compared to Narnian honey-fed bear and apples with friends.

Even so, it had been wonderful, burned fingers and all.

She sits in front of the dying fire, wrapped in a thin robe with the Professor's own Bible, a big thick monster of a book with pages and pages of scrawled notes tucked here and there.

She has decided that tonight she will indulge her losses, forget trying bury everything away from the world she was born in.

Alone, it does not matter if she lets the Gospels bring the memories they inevitably bring, does not matter if she reacts to the memory and not the words.

It has been eight years since she could read of the clearing of the moneychangers without seeing Aslan breathing on statues and the smaller lion sniffing at his own tail as his hindquarters turned live again.

Eight years since she could read of Pilate without seeing Jadis.

Eight years since she could read of poor doubting Thomas without remembering a warm rough tongue on her face.

It was the first summer after Caspian when she really understood why. She'd suspected after finding out how badly Lent, especially Holy Week, treated Edmund. She had practically figured things out when Aslan had evicted her and the High King himself from Narnia.

She could never talk about these things with Peter or Lucy. They thought in terms of the brighter parts of life, always. Darkness lasted only until the light came.

Peter the Magnificent, sword shining in the sun, cleaning out the remaining purely evil things from Narnia.

Lucy the Valiant, bring hope among the nearly fallen with her cordial, unable to go to the next unfortunate soldier until she sees blood returning to ashen cheeks.

She and Edmund were of a different mold.

Edmund the Just, sitting with all the seriousness ever made resting on his brow, not eating as he obsessed over the vague details of yet another odd case of warped intentions or heated passions gone awry and eventually he starts pacing the throne room until she calls up hot tea for them and lets him vent to her on the dais step.

Susan the Gentle, keeping castle while Peter runs off to battle and Lucy tours the countryside, dealing with obsessive suitors (at least Rabadash had _tried_ to hide his real plans) and the poor shattered souls who drag themselves to Cair Paravel to petition Adam's flesh and Adam's bone for help.

They had dealt with the darkness of a wrecked world, and not in the passing way of their siblings. There were light times, and laughter, but they knew intimately that Narnia was no paradise.

She and Edmund did not speak of what happened at the Stone Table that horrible night and blessed morning. They never had and now they never could.

The others were never an option. They had not seen the glory of him that morning.

And so Susan Pevensie lies sobbing in the soft glow of embers, engulfed in memory and simple knowing.

It was breaking down like this in the middle of a church service that made her stop attending.

She falls asleep there.

The next morning, she begins reading Professor Kirke's notes.


	2. Battlefield

__She was the first one to find him, even before Peter, even before Aslan led Lucy over the hill with her little vial of cordial._ _

__He had managed, somehow, to crawl between two of the great boulders that rested in the lee of the hill. He was covered in blood, and at one glance she knew most of it was likely his own._ _

__She knelt beside him, seeking any sign of life._ _

__Tears sprang to her eyes as she realized he was alive but fading. Torn between being there and seeking help, she froze, staring at his pale face as his labored breathing continued to slow._ _

__There was a clatter of armor nearby and she looked up to see Peter running down the hill, eyes wild and still holding both sword and shield._ _

__She looked up at him, not needing words as Peter nearly threw them to the ground and knelt by Edmund's side. He was stammering something about Edmund having saved everyone by attacking the witch._ _

__Lucy and Aslan topped the hill a few seconds later, with Lucy dashing forward at the booming command of "Now, Lucy!" that reverberated through Susan's spine._ _

__And then Lucy pulled the stopper out and she lifted his head and oh oh after a few seconds his breathing was like it was five minutes ago. He wasn't healed, he wasn't conscious, but he wasn't dying!_ _

__The thought brought everything home and tears trickled out of her eyes. Aslan and Lucy were talking, but oh oh the color was coming back to his face, just a little, and that consumed her entire world._ _

__The great lion and her sister ran off to help the other injured. Peter looked up at her and she choked out, "I'll tend to him. Your country needs you." And then she managed a small half-meant smile. "High King."_ _

__He dashed off, sword placed back in its scabbard and shield slung over his back._ _

__She stayed there, hands under her little brother's head, until his breathing was nearly normal and his eyes were moving under softly closed lids. Then she carefully scooted back against one of the rocks, finding a spot slanted at just the right angle for comfortable leaning. She took the shoulder plates off his armor, then pulled him up against her, her arms wrapped under his own, his head resting on her shoulder, and his forehead just barely touching her cheek._ _

__They must have been like that for ten minutes, judging by the sun, but it felt like it had been hours when he moaned a little, head moving enough that his hair tickled under her chin. "It's going to be okay, Little Brother."_ _

__"Su?" His voice was weak, so weak, but his eyes were open._ _

__"I'm right here, Edmund."_ _

__"Why did the Witch have his mane? Why did she say he was dead? Is...?"_ _

__Her heart and soul seemed to convulse inside her at the worry in his voice._ _

__"Aslan is undoing the witch's work somewhere over the hill. He's fine, Edmund." She hugged him as hard as she dared. "Just worry about yourself now."_ _

__Five minutes later the pain was almost gone. Another five and he was fidgeting._ _

__Fifteen minutes after he woke, he was standing with her mostly unwilling help, limping around the little clearing in the rocks far sooner than she wanted him to try, but oh if she had not helped he could have hurt himself more and who knew if the cordial would still help new injuries without another precious dose._ _

__When Lucy returned five minutes after that, it was almost like he had never been hurt at all.  
__

* * *

 _ _  
Everyone praised him when they walked into the remnants of the camp, the four humans and a lion who seemed like quite a bit more than he appeared._ _

__Peter might be the High King, or nearly so without the formalities yet, but Edmund was the hero of the day, the brave little warrior who had destroyed the one thing all Narnians lived in fear of: the witch's wand itself._ _

__It was all very serious, bowing and congratulations and so on. Very adult._ _

__And then a little voice piped up, that of a young faun who had been one of the witch's statues._ _

__"And I shall follow him through the meadows,  
And I shall follow him o'er the plains,  
His mane golden bright is before me  
And the swish of his tail keeps me safe.  
If I should lose my way in the tall grass  
His roar will lead me back to the way."_ _

__The voice fell silent a few seconds after the entire camp did, the great lion looking with big cat eyes at the little faun, horn stubs barely showing through his curly hair._ _

__The warm but hesitant, always hesitant, voice of Tumnus slowly took up the simple chorus a moment later, a child's song nearly as old as Narnia itself._ _

__When Susan felt the great bob of fur at the end of his tail strike her shoulder during the fourth line, she could not help herself but let loose a great gasping laugh._ _

__The great lion was enjoying this._ _

__The little faun's eyes were bright as he joined in as well, he and Tumnus dancing a little goat-footed dance as they sang and within seconds the rest of the camp was singing along, all slightly off-key and no one seeming to care one whit about it. And then they were dancing, Aslan seemingly everywhere at once, tail swishing and mane shaking as he bobbed between the dancers so much more easily than anything that big and that heavy had any right to move at all._ _

__And when they were all tired and fallen down and their voices hoarse, the four children and the fauns and the lion had somehow ended up next to each other, Susan leaning against the lion's side (at Aslan's personal invitation; she never would have dared otherwise) with Edmund close under her arm again, his hair mingling with the thick carpet of Aslan's mane. Peter and Tumnus were on a pile of blankets nearby, Lucy bundled up between them._ _

__And the little faun, whose name was 'Gertwus' when said through his missing front teeth (naturally missing, and he was amazingly cute without them, in the way of six-year-olds), was curled up between Aslan's paws and fast asleep. When his little hooves kicked for a moment and he made a strangled little bleat that made Tumnus snort in his own sleep, Aslan nuzzled him for a second until he quieted, little hands tangling in the great cat's fur._ _

__"Such a trusting child," Aslan purred so low Susan could barely hear it._ _

__She turned to face him, ever so carefully so that Edmund would not wake._ _

__He turned his head to face her as well. "This child was turned to stone for singing that song within the witch's earshot some ninety years ago. It is not your tale, but I tell you for all here but you, your brothers, and your sister have heard the story their entire lives."_ _

__Susan shivered and Aslan breathed warm lion breath upon her._ _

__"He will survive all this," he purred, and Susan had the strangest feeling she had just overheard something she was not supposed to, but had been given permission of a sort to. And then there was a big cat smile and a softly booming "Go to sleep, child. Tomorrow will be a battle of another kind for you" that seemed to come through her as much as from him._ _

__She cuddled close and whispered right against his huge rounded ear, "Thank you for my brother" and felt the long hairs move against her face as he nodded once._ _

__Within moments, she was asleep._ _


	3. Bow

She had taken two weeks to get together the nerve to use the address in Professor Kirke's address book to go see just what the damage to the bow would cost to fix.

It had been a parting gift, when they were returning to London after that wondrous and terrifying summer. She'd kept up with it as well as she could at school - archery was still a valued skill, even if it wasn't exactly ladylike - but after Caspian... there had been social pressure.

She wasn't going back, after all, so what did it matter if her Narnian survival skills slipped away?

It had been ill-kept.

The first thing she noticed upon entering the little shop was the young man sitting on the counter calculating something on a paper tablet.

"Good morning. Is Mr. Chase here?"

The young man didn't look up. "Glenn's in the back right now, fletching. What do you need?"

She blinked. His accent was somewhat familiar, but she couldn't place it. "I'm the girl who called yesterday about needing a bow repaired. Mr. Chase sold it to a Professor Kirke years ago, and..."

He raised his head, slightly. "You're the one the Professor left his things to."

"He'd given me the bow as a gift, years ago. I just haven't taken all that good care of it, so... What business of yours is it who he willed his earthly possessions to?"

An elderly gentleman walked into the room with a slight waddle. "He was a dear friend of both of us. And a great many other people. It surprised no few number of us that there was someone he cared enough to leave his archives to who was not someone we knew."

"My siblings and I, we were friends of his after we spent a summer there in his estate during the Blitz. But the others died in the accident, so it's just me now."

There was something about their eyes, and Mr. Chase kept glancing into hers.

"Can you fix it?" She held out the bow.

"Stars in the heaven! He told me he was giving it to someone who knew how to take care of it!"

"I grew up. Lost my way a bit, actually, Mr. Chase."

"Glenn, if you please." He clicked his tongue, then looked at her eyes again. "Young lady, I get to say this more often than I'd like, but act your real age."

Something sparkled in the young man's eyes, and he chuckled lightly.

"Mogie, not so long ago I was saying the same to you, if you'll kindly recall!" He took the bow from her and began to examine it.

"What do you mean?"

"What was his name?" Mogie's voice was quiet but full of emotion.

"Pardon?"

"His name. What was it?" Reverence, from the irreverent.

She recalled Edmund and Peter talking in low voices about a wood and rings, and Professor Kirke's notes tucked into his Bible about there being more than just two worlds. And his words so long ago about knowing others who had gone places from their words and appearances.

"Aslan," she whispered.

"Ah," Glenn breathed. "That explains a few things. He was Nrotha for me."

"Mranu," Mogie whispered.

"I thought he might be hiding a band of you from the rest of us."

She blinked again. "'Rest of us'?"

"Travel between worlds is not unheard of, although rare. We travelers have a way of finding each other, Miss...?"

"Pevensie. Susan Pevensie."

Glenn continued examining the bow as he continued to talk. "We meet up from time to time, try to give everyone contact with others. Professor Kirke was something of our historian and record-keeper, and those records are all he left to us."

"You know who he is...?" she asked.

"Of course!" Glenn chuckled. "Usually quite a while after we stumble back here, and never before going back. Some just talk about it more or less than others."

"And some as little as we can." Mogie was looking away, behind the counter.

Glenn seemed to be done with the bow. "It's going to take several weeks of work."

"How much will I owe you?"

"For a new friend, who is refinding her way... nothing. But if it happens again," he warned.

"Thank you so much." She was rather overwhelmed.

"Is... is it normal," she asked after a moment, "for people to have different reactions to Lent, after?"

"Always," Mogie choked.

"It depends on the experience, but yes. We all react differently, once we know. Sometimes even before we know."

"We were like that. All four of us."

"Ah. And you?" Glenn offered her a chair.

"I take it badly. I saw..." She wiped tears away from her eyes, and he handed her a handkerchief. "Thank you. I... I wasn't the worst off, but... bad enough." _Edmund... there could have been support, real support, for you!_

"It would be best if you did not mention how it happened," Mogie whispered very seriously.

"Why? I didn't cause it."

"Unfortunately, the community doesn't take well to those who did." Glenn was matter-of-fact. "The Professor never liked that we made the distinction, after all we're all Daughters of Eve and Sons of Adam, but..."

"They call people like me Nephews. And Nieces, but there are fewer of those these days than there used to be."

"Of who?"

He finally turned to look at her, really look at her straight on.

And she knew.


	4. Horns

It was night, a day after the battle, a few days before their coronations.

Edmund was sitting outside his tent, watching the moon.

Susan saw his shadow on the wall of hers and Lucy's, and went outside. "Can't sleep?"

He shook his head and lowered it into his hands. "Do you think they know what the deal he made really was?"

"Lucy and I haven't said anything about it to anyone. I don't think Aslan's going to say anything, or he already would have. I'd say the secret's safe between us and the beech tree, except all the beech trees I've met so far are gossips."

He laughed weakly.

"Ed, if it was going to be a problem it already would be."

She sat beside him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

"Su..."

"Even if you're about to be a king, you're still going to be my little brother."

They sat there for a while like that.

"What's this I've heard about you asking for a little extra favor from the dwarves before the coronation?" she asked.

"It's just a little something I have planned for someone. I asked Aslan about it, and he didn't say there was anything wrong with it."

"Oh?"

He smiled, like he used to sometimes. "You'll see."

* * *

Coronation Day, early, and Mr. Tumnus was driving both girls slightly mental.

"You look fine!" Susan said.

He wavered on his little goat feet, hooves clicking on the stone.

"You're a good faun."

"No one's going to notice. And everyone already knows."

He fingered the broken tips of his horns again.

Edmund walked in, one hand fisted around something.

"Ed, this isn't a good time..." Susan warned him.

"Yes it is." He took a deep breath. "Mr. Tumnus, I..." He shook his head, took another breath, squared his shoulders, and started over. "Faun Tumnus, when I came to Narnia for the first time, yours was the only name I knew of someone who belonged here. I didn't mean any of this to happen. I was just a scared child and that doesn't excuse anything but it is the truth."

Tumnus nodded solemnly. "You are not the first innocent she ever used."

Ed held out his hand. "These are for you."

Tumnus held out an open palm and Edmund dropped something shiny into it. The faun was blinking away tears a moment later.

"I can't undo what happened, but I can at least give you your dignity back." Ed wiped at his own eyes with one hand.

Susan put a hand on her sister's elbow. "Come on, Lu. We've got to get ready ourselves."

* * *

They were all nearly ready. The centaurs inside were noisily arranging themselves, and Susan could hear the clanging of their armor through the barely opened thick throne room door.

Mr. and Mrs. Beaver dashed through with smiles, among the last to enter.

The fox followed, giving them all a low tail-swishing bow before he too slipped through the door.

Mr. Tumnus slipped back into the hallway. He helped them all check that their royal cloaks were still hanging correctly, and that all else was arranged as it ought to be.

He had just knelt to adjust one of Lucy's sleeves where it had twisted when she asked him, "What's that on your horns?"

He blushed.

Peter and Susan both looked at Edmund. "So that's what you've been up to the past few days," Peter said. "Trying to buy forgiveness out of the royal treasury." There was disappointment in his voice, as if he'd thought their brother had really changed and now doubted it.

"It's not like that," Susan replied. "He was just trying..."

Peter glared at her for all of two seconds before Edmund found his voice. "I asked Aslan about it, before I talked to the dwarves. To make sure it was appropriate."

Mr. Tumnus looked straight into Peter's eyes for a moment. "A faun's horns are a part of his dignity, your majesty."

"And it's not like he isn't going to be right at the focal point of the room shortly, Peter." Susan watched as he calmed down. "Considering what Mr. Tumnus went through for all of us, we ought to have done it together."

A trumpet rang a single note. "Oh!" Mr. Tumnus ran back through the door as Aslan bounded up the entryway stairs, took the turn in a single step, and came to a stop among them.

"It's time, Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve."

They arranged themselves to either side of him, Susan sneaking a hand into the outer hairs of his mane for reassurance, and a moment later the full fanfare erupted as the door swung open.


	5. Job

Nephew of Judas.

She was pacing the house.

Nephew of Judas.

This was what people went to other worlds for? This was what he delivered them back to, because all of the Nephews had been saved with his blood, one way or another, in other worlds? This?

She was almost afraid to know how many.

No, scratch that. She _was_ afraid.

Glenn and Mogie had invited her to come join the next meeting, and had even offered transportation there.

If that was what they had thought of someone like Edmund, what would they think of a doubter like her? Someone who would have died if she hadn't rejected everything... everything...

Everything.

Or she could have talked the boys out of going after those bloody rings (all the pain they had caused, in two worlds now), now tucked away in the wardrobe (Professor Kirke had left it to her, after all, and where else was fitting to hold such things?) in a locked cashbox. Aslan had told the Professor to leave those alone, she'd heard them talking about it! If no one had gone for the rings, none of them would have been there...

They would have been orphans, but they'd still have each other, and the Professor...

She curled up on Edmund's old bed in the room he and Peter had once shared when they were younger and cried.

If she hadn't denied Narnia, they would be alive.

* * *

Susan went back to the shop a few days later.

"Need another hand around here?" she asked.

Glenn laughed. "After the condition you left that bow in?"

"To be honest, the one I was used to was enchanted so that it would take determined effort to mangle it." She glanced around. "Where's Mogie?"

"Ah, he only comes in during the mornings. He helps me keep the books, and I don't mind him being around and pulling a decent wage off me." He fussed with a rack of arrows. "Besides, it keeps him busy, he could live off the family business if he wanted and his mother would let him."

"Oh?"

"Mogie's ancestors were marooned on an island centuries ago. When the island was found, his family came back to Europe and used what they had amassed there to get a nice start. His uncle raises hunting hounds, and Mogie is rather a natural with canines."

"How did he get a name like that?"

"Every world is a bit different. His had wolves, and Mranu was a wolf, so we tried to call him Mowgli but Mogie was what stuck." He stood back from the rack. "Now, an extra set of hands and eyes all the time, that I could use. And someone, perhaps, to talk to when business is slow."

"I could handle that." She smiled. "What was your world?"

"Mainly centaurs, some satyrs and fauns. That's where I learned all this, centaurs. Plains as far as the eye could see, and human settlements here and there where the rocks came out of the earth in huge masses. It was beautiful to see one backlit with the setting sun." He shook his head. "And now I've got old Thunderhoof to thank for all this."

"I miss our centaurs. Narnia had so many different people..."

"Well," Glenn said after a moment, "there's things to sort through in the back. If you wouldn't mind starting now, I could use eyes up here until Mogie shows."

"I don't mind. It's better than pacing and thinking at home."

He turned to go into the back.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Susan?"

"Just what usually happens when everyone gets together?"

"We talk, eat together, debate theology. If there's someone new present, she is usually expected to explain what happened in her travels. Not in detail, but enough."

"Enough to tell if that someone is a Niece or not, you mean."

"Usually. There's also a desire to learn whatever name he went by in that world. Sometimes there has been contact between humans and another world for hundreds of years, and there are other travellers who know the same sights to talk to, which is not your case at all. But yes, mainly to sort out the Nephews and Nieces."

"I don't have to worry about that." Her words were nearly half to reassure herself. Edmund was... Edmund was dead, and nothing in the world of the living could harm him now. "If I'm a Niece of anybody..."

Glenn raised an eyebrow.

"...then I'm a Niece of Thomas. I didn't believe, either."

He chuckled. "Just don't say that around the others, Miss Pevensie. We'll talk more about setting your employment up properly once I get done sorting through some things in the storage room."


	6. Tower

Five weeks in, High King Peter had taken an army into the Narnian woods to root out whatever bits might have been left of the White Witch's own forces.

Young Queen Lucy was in what passed for school in Narnia, which meant she, Gertlus, and any other court youngsters sitting down on the rocks beside the beach learning Narnian history, and how not to anger a centaur, and all those other things Mr. Tumnus was quietly telling her older siblings as needed.

Queen Susan spent her days seeing to the basic running of Cair Paravel. She'd had to help their mother around the house back in England, and she thought she was figuring out what she was doing fairly well given the circumstances.

Which left King Edmund up in the throne room with Mr. Tumnus at his side, sorting through grievances and basic court politics.

Susan was walking through the corridors after a long day of sorting through this and that and what room might be usable for the school on days when it rained. Lucy was long ago in bed; Peter and Susan had both insisted that the youngest Pevensies keep to some sort of royal bedtime, for their own sakes.

She wandered up towards the high towers. The night sky was still so unfamiliar that she knew she needed to just sit under it from time to time, just to get used to it.

Edmund was already there, looking over the edge at the sea far below.

"Ed, be careful. And aren't..."

"I couldn't sleep. You and Peter aren't the only ones who need time to think."

She walked over to him. She thought he'd been crying recently, but she couldn't tell for sure. "About what?"

"Everything. Everyone. 100 years of ignored slights all at once." He leaned heavily on the stonework. "And they all expect me to be able to fix it. Even Peter expects me to fix it."

"Personally, I think they're mostly all glad someone bothers to listen and is trying to set things right at all. Especially after what we have all just gone through."

"It is not that simple, Su." He looked up at the stars.

It felt like a cold breeze whipped over the castle then. "You're worried they will find out exactly what deal Aslan had to make."

He looked down and nodded.

"Aslan trusted you to do this."

"He's not the one arguing over what happens to land inherited from people who were turned into statuary."

Susan flinched.

"Everyone in the country is hurting, one way or another."

Clicking on the steps. "I am deeply sorry to intrude, your majesties, but the night is half gone."

"Thank you for the reminder." Susan smiled at Mr. Tumnus.

"King Edmund?"

"Yes?"

Hooves clicked nervously on the stonework. "We know."

Edmund's face was blanched white in the moonlight. A second later, he started trembling.

"The trees have ears, your highness. And the beeches are indeed gossips."

"Well, that's that." Susan patted her brother on the shoulder. "It's foolish to worry about something that already happened."

"And now nobody is going to trust me again, Susan. And Peter's how far away with the army right now?"

"I must beg your pardon again, but I think you both have misunderstood me."

"You don't need to beg pardon from me, ever." A little color had returned to his face. "What do you mean?"

"The trees are gossips. The word was traveling through the camp as we were marching to war, and it's been traveling through all Narnia since then. I suspect that it spread with the news the High King was gathering an army to cleanse the wood, if not before." More clicking. "So it appears to me that everyone coming to you for judgment, King Edmund, knows what happened. Perhaps even in detail. And yet they accept your decisions as valid. No one is waiting until High King Peter returns."

Edmund sat down on a stonework bench, clearly dumbstruck. Susan sat beside him.

Mr. Tumnus turned to walk down the stairs again, took a few steps, and then turned to face them again. "And if it matters to you, as it does to me, I knew when I accepted these from you." He tapped the end of one of his horns as it glinted in the starlight.

They both sat in silence until they could not longer hear his hooves.

"Ed?"

He turned to look at her.

"You need sleep. I need sleep. There are things to be done tomorrow."

He nodded.

She wrapped an arm around her brother's shoulders and they walked downstairs together.


	7. Podium

Susan delicately sat down in the back seat of Mr. Chase's automobile.

Mogie closed the door behind her and got into the passenger seat.

"Thank you again for this, Mr. Chase."

"Glenn," he insisted.

Mogie chuckled and leaned around his seat as they entered the road. "Very few other worlds seem to use last names the way modern England does. A fair number of us only use them when we have to."

"And that explains you living under a nickname?"

He gave her a weak smile. "I have reasons for that." He sat properly in the seat again.

"Still planning on going to the Nephew gathering after the organized meeting is over?" Glenn asked him.

"I wouldn't miss it. Bertram doesn't come to the main gathering, after all."

"I'd have thought he would come if he knew there would be someone new telling her story."

Mogie shook his head. "It's been a bad past few months. The last thing he needs right now is to deal with everyone. Apparently they lost a few of the people where he works in the accident." He glanced back at Susan and she gave him a small nod to tell him she was okay. "And that on top of everything else." He seemed to ponder something for a moment. "He probably should talk to Susan, even if only for a few minutes. Just to meet the newcomer."

Glenn turned them onto a long straight road. "And you Nephews would actually accept one of the rest of us in your gathering for even that long?"

"We only split off because of how we were treated." Mogie was staring out the window into the passing trees. "Susan, whichever of your siblings caused it, what was your relationship like afterwards?"

"Closer than ever." She felt tears starting again. "We drifted a bit once I started trying to forget, but we were still close even then."

He nodded. "Then no one should have a problem with your presence."

They rode in silence for a while.

"How long ago did the second gathering start splitting off?"

"No one actually knows." Glenn turned off the road. "It has gotten worse over time, though."

* * *

It had been years since Susan had addressed a group this size, and never in this world.

There was a podium at one end of the small hall they were all in, and Mogie was gently nudging her towards it.

She felt underdressed, even though she was more formal than most of the other women and most of the men were in everyday suits. Mogie was still in the gray tweed he was always wearing whenever he was at the shop.

She made it up there with what decorum she could manage – it really was quite different to look composed in front of a group rather than wandering the shops with a few friends.

Besides, speaking with the imperative and crown of a queen was about as far as one could rhetorically get from being a barely-adult recently-orphaned newcomer into a social world that was older than she wanted to know.

Susan didn't want to lean on the podium, but she couldn't help it.

"My name is Susan Pevensie, and my brothers, sister, and I stumbled through the wardrobe in Professor Kirke's spare room after we were evacuated there during the war. We ended up in the world he had visited himself as a boy."

Mogie found a seat in a far corner of the room. Glenn nodded.

"In that world he is a lion named Aslan, as I don't doubt the Professor told you all when he made his introduction. I did not cause it, but I saw him die, and rise again."

Her voice choked off, even after all the times she had practiced those two sentences in preparation.

"I doubted he was back at first, as others have before me. We helped him clear an evil from that world, and entrusted us with that country's care until the day we stumbled back through. We all returned again a year later, and after that Aslan told me I would not be returning. My younger siblings returned one more time, my cousin with them, and he too made one more visit with a friend."

She felt the tears start and knew she was lucky to only have a bit more she had to say.

"Every human but me I know of who traveled to that world and returned died in the train crash a few weeks ago, along with my parents."

The world went blurry.

A moment later, someone had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and was guiding her away. "There, there, dearie, let's get you to a chair."

Once she had been seated and wiped away some of her tears, the elderly woman who had helped her over asked, "Better now?"

Susan nodded.

Small conversations were breaking out all around the room now. She couldn't make sense of most of them.

Some people were headed for one of the doors now.

There was suddenly a hand on her shoulder. "If you wanted to meet Bertram, now's the time."

"Now, why would she want to meet trash, Jaime?"

Susan blinked at the words, flustered inside.

"You know as well as I do, Elizabeth, that trash is thrown out. Not purchased." Mogie's voice was gruff. It sounded like he was trying not to growl. "And not even scrap sells at that kind of price."

"Hmph."

Susan stood up. "I promised I would go meet him."

She got the sense as she walked away with Mogie that the woman's entire view of her had shifted, simply because she was willingly associating with the Nephews, even temporarily.


	8. The Knife

It was two weeks after Peter's return.

Susan woke in the wee hours of the morning to knocking at her bedroom door.

Susan fought her way through the bed curtains she was only just now truly getting used to, and fairly ran to the door. She knew that if a Narnian was disturbing her, and not Peter or Edmund, at this time of night, something major must be going on.

But it was not one of the Narnians.

Edmund was standing there in his nightshirt, looking somewhat haunted.

“Ed? What is it?”

“Nightmares.”

She almost told him to go back to his own rooms, to handle it on his own the way she and Peter had to. But then she remembered that despite the adult responsibilities they had taken on, that Edmund had now made his own, they were still children.

He wasn't all that far separated in time yet from the boy who ran into a house under bomb attack to save a photograph, after all.

She beckoned him inside.

He flopped onto the foot of her bed, letting himself fall back onto the plush bedcover.

“What about?”

“The kitchen workers were sharpening the knives today.”

Susan tilted her head, not understanding, and sat down next to him. “Why...?”

He stared up at her. “No one told you girls exactly what was going on when I was rescued, did they?”

She felt her heart quicken. “No. And Aslan told us not...”

“...to linger on what had happened. Or something like that.” He closed his eyes. “I know Peter was told, because I overheard the centaurs talking to him about it.”

He suddenly seemed much younger than he was.

“Ed?”

“The White Witch had decided to go ahead and kill me,” he finally said after a long silence.

Her heart felt like it had just entered its own 100-year winter.

He rolled onto his side, and she put a hand on his shoulder.

Edmund lay there for a few long minutes, not so much crying as simply leaking.

“They tied me to a tree,” he finally said. “I couldn't move.”

She squeezed his shoulder.

“And then that dwarf bared my throat, and I heard her sharpening the knife...”

And then he was truly weeping.

Susan surprised herself with the word, although in hindsight she must have used it before and in the same sense. Crying was, to her at least, what children did. Weeping was more adult, more mature.

More kingly, even if Edmund wasn't wearing his crown at the moment.

"They came just in time, didn't they?" she finally asked.

He nodded, sitting up again.

After a long silence, he asked her, "How can we fix a country when we can't even fix _ourselves_?"

Susan thought long and hard before admitting, "I don't know. Aslan thinks we can, but I don't know how. Maybe we're just hurt in different places than they are."

* * *

Long after Edmund had gone back to bed, Susan lay staring at the ceiling, thinking.

What about them, all four of them, had earned four children from a formerly quiet road in Finchley _crowns_?

Why had they been chosen to find their way to Narnia?

Why had Aslan gotten them involved at all?

What could they possibly do here that someone older, more experienced, could not?

How did it all fit together?

She found no answers.


	9. The Cottage

"Is she always like that?" Susan whispered as they stepped outside.

"Toned down from what she used to be like, honestly." Mogie sighed. "She's one of the more extreme, though."

"No one does anything to change it? No one speaks up?"

"Not really, no."

She stopped and looked straight at him. The sun was setting behind him. "You all just accept this?"

"What else are we supposed to do? We're Nephews and Nieces of someone who had no place with the rest." He kept walking, and Susan followed.

There was a small guest cottage at the end of the path. "Who owns this place?"

"It's been held in a sort of trust for centuries. The whole situation is rather hard to explain. I don't think I even understand most of it."

She was once again struck that something about him, something about how he looked or talked, reminded her of something else. She still couldn't tell what it was, or how, but it was there.

"Your real first name is Jaime?"

He nodded. "I prefer the nickname, though."

They finally got to the door and Mogie held it for her. "Susan's here to meet Bertram," he called out.

"And considering what I heard as I was leaving, I think I'd be more at ease here than there," she opined.

"First time I've ever heard that," a man ten years her elder and at least five older than Mogie called out. "It's a nice change."

Nearly everyone laughed.

"My name is John," he offered, extending his hand.

She shook it.

A woman with slightly graying hair came over. "If I understand correctly, one of your siblings was one of us?"

Susan nodded. "I think Professor Kirke was trying to keep us all away." She sniffled. "Doesn't matter now, does it? They're all safe between his paws."

"Indeed they are. I'm Catherine."

They wandered through the crowd.

A middle-aged gentleman in a brown suit was sitting at a table in the farthest corner of the next room. "There's someone to meet you, Bertram. She's not one of us, but she's friendly enough."

He looked up from the drink he had been sipping at. "Good evening. My name is Bertram Wirth."

His was among the thicker German accents Susan had ever heard, and it rather shocked her. The war had, after all, only ended a few years ago.

"Mine is Susan Pevensie."

His eyes widened. "Pevensie? Did you by any chance know Edmund?"

It took a moment to regain composure. "My little brother."

Bertram pushed a chair out from the table with his foot. "Come, sit down. No need to stand weeping when you can sit and do it properly."

She sat down. "How did you know him?"

"He volunteered at the charity I work at. To be quite honest, we were only a few days away from offering a permanent paid position to him."

She remembered him talking about where he went every Saturday to Peter...

That accent...

"Oh."

He looked at her out of the side of his eyes. "Nothing quite like losing several coworkers and other good friends after you've already lost everything else." He lifted his drink and took a large gulp.

She shifted uneasily in her chair. She had been used to the fine art of talking with those who had suffered tragedies in Narnia, but she had been a queen there, free to ask questions that would be beyond daring now.

"So, did I overhear correctly? One of your siblings was like us?"

"We were all travelers, and yes, one of us caused what happened." She started at the wall behind him. "Doesn't matter. They're gone."

A long pause. Across the room, Mogie was laughing at something Catherine said. "All of them?"

"And everyone else I knew who traveled. And our parents."

He said something softly in German that she didn't understand.

They sat quietly for a moment, and then he asked her, "Then you have not spoken at length with anyone who traveled somewhere other than your own second world?"

"No, I haven't. Glenn has told me a few things, but not much, and Mogie..."

"Mogie does not say much of anything about his second world to anyone." He sighed. "You understand that sometimes one travels with family, and sometimes one travels with friends?"

She nodded. "My cousin Eustace did both."

"Ah. Now, we Nieces and Nephews travel the same ways. One of us may make that essential mistake while in a world with family, and another may make it with friends in the world. With that comes an incredible diversity of relationships."

She thought of how they had all reacted differently to what Edmund had done, both immediately and over time. "I saw that among us."

"Travelers figure him out at different speeds and different times."

She nodded.

"Mogie traveled with a distant cousin who did not like him much. This cousin was older, and gained an understanding long before Mogie could have. When Mogie told her he had received his 'learn of me in your own world' notice, she told him what he had done."

Susan flinched.

"Others of us have it much easier. Some even figure out who he really is on their last travel. He never confirms it, even if one has the temerity to ask him, but those who understand before leaving do tend to take it a bit better in the long term. I was not so lucky. My wife Abigail," his voice cracked, "may his wing ever be her shelter, was."

"She was a Niece?"

He nodded.

She noticed the tear track on his cheek and – wisely so – kept the conversation on the lovely summer England was having for the rest of the evening. She had so many questions, but it wasn't her place to ask - not yet, maybe not ever.

It was wonderfully interesting just watching everyone talk about worlds so incredibly different from Earth or Narnia that she almost felt that they shouldn't exist.

There were so many people here, even at this side gathering...

But that meant...

Bertram must have seen the look on her face. "Yes, that many times. No doubt many more as well." His voice was grave. "There are very few worlds we know of where he hasn't yet, and we may just not have met the travelers who would know yet." He gave her a weak smile. "After all, we all thought he hadn't in the world Professor Kirke visited until hearing from you."

That bit of truth was almost too much to bear. There were at least fifty people here!

"Tell me, please. Which ever of your siblings it was... was he or she at some sort of peace about what had happened?"

"I don't know, I had stopped talking about Narnia at all." She remembered Edmund happily chattering to Peter about something he'd managed to set in motion that must have been at whatever survivors group Bertram worked with. "I think he probably was," she whispered, leaning close. "Or at least with what he was trying to do with himself."

Bertram's eyes filled with tears. “Oh no,” he pleaded in a voice that sounded more than half-choked with emotion. “Please no. Not him.”

She nodded sadly. “Him.”


	10. Chapel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've normally gone in chronological order both for the chapters in the current timeline and the flashback timeline, but from here onward the flashbacks aren't going to work that way.
> 
> And as this chapter should make clear, I'm going primarily with the movie version of _Prince Caspian_ 's events.

It happened the month after they all returned to school.

Lucy had been determined enough to be sure, absolutely and completely, that Susan was okay with Aslan's announcement that she was too old to return - as well as the total and irrevocably complete destruction of just whatever had been going on between she and Caspian before they left - that Susan really had not had any time at all to think about anything but classes and reuniting with her group of friends.

By the time the month was drawing to a close, Lucy had finally settled into her own circle of yearmates and began leaving her older sister be.

Why should she have any problem adjusting, anyway? Susan had already planned on not returning to Narnia before they had been summoned at the train platform. She had accepted the idea. They had done what Aslan needed them to do and then blundered their way out of the wardrobe again. No matter what the Professor said, he hadn't made it back himself so who knew if he was right about their being other ways that would open for them, anyway? That was that.

(At least she had managed to have her first kiss as Queen Susan. She hadn't dared risk it her first trip, even if she had been older then.)

Once a queen of Narnia, always a queen of Narnia, but that didn't mean she had a ticket back.

And now she never would.

Somehow, the knowing was worse than the not-knowing of the past year had been.

* * *

Chapel, on Sunday.

The school rules required attendance, but Susan and all the other girls usually only half-listened. Apparently that had been a tradition since the founding of the school, and no one besides perhaps the local vicar cared much about changing it.

Which was why she was caught completely off-balance when one of the readings for the week sounded exactly like something Aslan would have said in that low explanatory happy nearly-purr of his that she had always loved so much.

In fact, she could almost hear the great lion's rumble as the man read the words.

This understandably raised the level of additional shock she received a moment later when the reading concluded with the phrase of thanks for a gospel reading instead of the one for any other Bible reading.

Meanwhile, five pews closer to the altar, Lucy was sitting there attentively as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

How could Lucy - Lucy, of all people - have missed that?

It was Lucy who had always had the strongest connection to the great lion. Lucy who was the one to see lone manifestations of him, and the first to see the times he came to everyone.

Surely if this had happened every week for years, long enough to become accustomed to it, Lucy would have said _something_ to one of her siblings.

But no.

Clearly it had only been Susan this time.

* * *

Susan went to her favorite thinking spot that afternoon.

She'd done her schoolwork the day before, so her free time was, for once, just that.

The spot was just past the edge of the woods beyond the field tennis court, on the other side of a slight rise. It was hidden enough that she wouldn't be stumbled upon, but there was no way she would miss hearing someone calling out her name from the meadow.

There was a small stream nearby, close enough to watch and listen to.

The place reminded her of a quiet place she'd had near Cair Paravel, where the final tributary stream of the River Rush came down from the royal gardens. The last time she'd seen it, they had been washing their hands there before splitting a meager lunch and exploring the castle ruins.

It felt like forever ago.

It had been less than two months.

What could possibly have made her the favored one now and not Lucy? Why hadn't Lucy heard that rumble?

 _She's going back,_ Susan realized with a sinking feeling. _I'm not. We're under different orders from Aslan now._

It was only after an hour of trying to find any other possibility that Susan Pevensie admitted to herself that, even without the rumbling, that passage had been a very Aslan-ish thing to say and that the lion's warning that she and Peter needed to get to know whoever he was on earth really didn't make a bit of sense unless...

Unless.


End file.
